Backstage with Margot Fonteyn and the Bumptious Colonial

Background

Dame Margot Fonteyn was the world-famous ballerina who led the Royal Ballet from age sixteen until her retirement at age sixty. Robin Haig, an Australian, was awarded a Royal Academy of Dancing scholarship at the age of seventeen and traveled to London in 1956 to study at the Royal Ballet School, entering the company at Covent Garden sixteen months later. Haig then toured with the Royal Ballet to America and, in 1961, to Russia, where the company learned of Rudolf Nureyev's defection. The next year Dame Margot personally invited Robin to be part of an 8-member concert group, known affectionately as "The Fonteyn Folies." This group toured to Australia, New Zealand, Manila and Hong Kong; during the tour Robin came to know Dame Margot, both as a dancer and as a person. Several months later Fonteyn and Nureyev formed their extraordinary dance partnership, each bringing something of enormous value to the other. Fonteyn, almost twenty years older than Nureyev, discovered new depths to her art just when she had been contemplating retirement, while Nureyev, the brash new "pop star" of ballet, learned a new maturity and a more rigorous professionalism. Haig, who chose to leave the Royal Ballet to dance with and direct other companies, had the opportunity to perform with Nureyev in La Sylphide and Sonate a Trois. Then, in subsequent years, Haig often found herself performing in the same companies and concert groups as Fonteyn. Robin's last meeting with Dame Margot was in 1988, three years before Fonteyn's death from cancer.